THE ground-breaking Turbomiser chiller, which uses the oil-less Turbocor compressor, is to be made available using the latest 'fourth generation' HFO refrigerants.
British companies Klima-Therm and Cool-Therm, who first developed the chiller with Italian manufacturer Geoclima, have now announced the immediate availability of models to run on 1234ze, with 1234yf versions to follow when that refrigerant becomes available in commercial quantities.

The low GWP HFOs are being developed by a number of refrigerant manufacturers for stationary equipment, with Honeywell, DuPont and Mexichem all recently announcing the imminent availability of blends based on these gases.

HFO-1234ze has been available since 2008 and is currently mainly used as a blowing agent in the foam industry. Previous tests with HFO1234yz and HFO1234ze on a beverage cooler are said to have shown similar performances to R134a, but with a 300 times better GWP (GWPs of 4 and 6, respectively). The new refrigerants also have lower discharge temperatures than R134a.

Turbomiser's developers say that the adoption of HFOs has not required a change in the design of the chiller or its components. Their own tests have shown that, while there is a reduction in total available compressor capacity, efficiency is increased by 10% at any given cooling output.

From a standing start five years ago, the Turbomiser ultra-efficient chiller has become established as a mainstream solution for cooling data centres, offices, hotels and other mid-size applications across the UK.

Turbomiser uses a combination of advanced adiabatic technology, liquid pump amplification, micro-channel condensers and the oil-less Turbocor compressors to cut energy use by as much as 60%